Time. Probably one of our most valuable resources that constantly seems to slip through our fingers. Where did the day even go? Actually, where did the month go?! If we’re not careful we can lose a lot of time, especially for those of us running a one-woman show. We do everything! And we don’t have a boss making us do it.

You are the boss. So if you don’t make yourself get things done, it just doesn’t happen. I’m a procrastinator to the core. Especially if the thing I need to do is less than exciting. In high school, my spanish teacher would give us these craft projects that made me want to rip my hair out. So naturally, I’d stay up super late the night before it was due getting it done. But really, HOW does color-by-number reaaaaaally help me retain the color names?? (Hint: it DOESN’T) Okay, rant over. 😅

BUT we definitely have our color-by-number equivalents in our creative businesses. I’d bet money that finances rank up there in your least favorite tasks…am I right? It’s not fun and you’d probably rather be styling a floral arrangement or painting a new pattern for your latest branding client. But until you can outsource that part of your business, you’ve gotta get it done.

Over the years, as I’ve worked to transition to a “recovering procrastinator,” I’ve learned a few ways to make sure time doesn’t disappear. So let’s talk about how you can manage your time like a boss!

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “time is money.” I think that’s pretty true. Time gives us so many opportunities to make money. But I’ve also found time to be like money. Both time and money are limited resources. You don’t have endless amounts of money and you certainly don’t have endless amounts of time.

Although time is like money, there’s one big unfortunate difference. If you lose money, you can most likely find a way to make more of it. But if you lose time, it’s gone. You can never get that time back.

Even the Bible talks about this idea. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “Pay careful attention, then, to how you live–not as unwise people but as wise–making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

So how can you make sure that you’re wise, making the most of the limited time you have in your business?

Treat time like money.

Just like you should create a budget for your money so that you’re telling your money where to go and what to do, you need to create a budget for your time. (Not a budgeter yet? Head over to my 3 Reasons You Need a Budget post to see why you need to start asap!)

Budgeting your time is actually a pretty simple process.

First, you need to figure out how much time you have in your week.

If you’re a full-time entrepreneur, you probably have about 40 hours. If you still have another job, that’s totally fine! Maybe you have 10 hours to work of your business.

Once you know how much time you have, you have to tell your time what it’s going to be used for.

Let’s say you have ten hours this week. You have to email your clients, categorize last month’s expenses, post to social media, write a blog post, and put together quotes for your new inquiries. Simply list out your To Do’s and put a time estimate on each of them. It might look a little like this:

• • Email clients (1 hour)

• • Categorize expenses (½ hour)

• • Post to Instagram (½ hour)

• • Write and schedule blog post (3 hours)

• • Put together floral quote for client 1 (1 hour)

• • Put together floral quote for client 2 (1 hour)

• • Put together floral quote for client 3 (1 hour)

Now if you did some quick math (or added it up on your phone calculator like I would 😂) you would see that all of that is estimated to take only 8 hours! That’s pretty encouraging because you know that you have enough time to get everything done! You even have a little extra time if you get writers block and blogging takes a little longer than you anticipated. Or even better, if you get everything on your list done, use your extra time to do even more and get a head start on next week! Get it, girl!

Now, unfortunately, more often than not, we entrepreneurs tend to be a little overly ambitious and think we should be able to accomplish more than our time allows. Ummm… Guilty! 🙋🏼‍♀️ Who else is with me?

So when you have 10 hours to work but 12 hours of to-do’s, you know you need to shorten your list and push something back to next week or find a few extra hours. This might feel discouraging at first, but trust me, it is actually a life-saver! It’s so incredibly motivating to complete everything on your list and go into the weekend knowing you accomplished all you set out to. Come on, you can’t tell me that doesn’t make you feel like a boss! 😄

The real beauty of budgeting your time?

When you know exactly how much time you have and how you need to use that time to get it done, you realize how important it is to remove everything else that would prevent you from doing what you need to do. No more endless scrolling or allowing yourself to get distracted by Netflix or stalking that other boss lady’s most recent trip to Target in her insta stories.

When you budget your time, you get focus.

And when you combine a dream with focus – things actually start to happen!

So let’s make the most of the time we have and use it to grow a healthy business that serves our clients well!

<3 Val

ps..need some help making this happen? Jump in my Facebook Community and we’ll help you out! <3